


On Homo Sapiens

by lotesse



Series: Start over at the wires, use lions! use thunder! [3]
Category: Kairos (O'Keefe) Series - Madeleine L'Engle
Genre: An Acceptable Time, Arthritis, Coming of Age, F/F, F/M, Family Feels, Generation Gap, Non-Penetrative Sex, Ritual Sex, Samhain, Telepathy, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:14:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25653469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lotesse/pseuds/lotesse
Summary: I heard her all the way from here. She's crossed over a time threshold at Mother and Father's. The doorway between eras there has been calling to her for a while, and she's interested.The doors are all open, tonight, and they're open wide. It was easy for her to pass through.
Relationships: Alex Murry/Kate Murry, Polly O'Keefe/Anaral
Series: Start over at the wires, use lions! use thunder! [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1181747
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	On Homo Sapiens

_With small cuts Cro-Magnon man recorded the moon's phases on the handles of his tools, thinking about her as he worked. Animals. Horizon. Face in a pan of water. In every story I tell comes a point where I can see no further. I hate that point. It is why they call storytellers blind – a taunt._

_-Anne Carson_

“Meg,” Charles Wallace's kythe came to her, sharp and insistent, and Meg Murry O'Keefe rolled over in bed. 

In the cradling warmth of the small hours, the sound of the sea seemed like it was coming from right outside the bedroom window, although they were set back from the island coast. Beside her, Calvin slept in an exhausted pile of elbows, knees, and orange hair, curled with his back pressed against her side.

She kythed back, soundlessly, “Charles, what is it? It's late, for pete's sake, couldn't you have called in the morning? Cal and I have only just got to sleep, we were re-running lab results after trick-or-treating with the children.”

“Sorry,” Charles Wallace sent back to her, as clear as if he had spoken into her ear. “I wouldn't have woken you if it wasn't important. I didn't want to risk a phone call, I wanted to speak to just you first; we might leave Calvin out of it, if you think it's all right when you've heard everything.”

“So what is it?” she repeated, trying not to grouch; if there was something Charles needed to say, it was important that she be available to listen, she knew that. But he did have a maddening tendency to communicate in riddles and in portents, and she itched to pin him down in plain prose.

“I want to tell you about something I know,” Charles told her, “but I need to find the right way to frame it for you, so you won't be upset. I think mother and father are upset – I'm going to try to call father tomorrow, to see if he'll talk to me about it – and I need to talk to you, first. You were with me, the night I went with the unicorn through the Might-Have-Beens, so you'll understand. None of the others remember. We followed a connection through time between Mad Dog Branzillo, Vespugia, Wales, and the American Indians who lived beside the lake where the Star-Watching rock is now.”

“I was pregnant with Poly,” she said. “At Thanksgiving. Yes, I remember. They called themselves the People of the Wind, didn't they? The first time, when you were learning to go Within, it was with a boy named Harcels. He was so happy, and whole, and free. I dream about that kythe sometimes. It's what I want for my own children, happiness like that.”

“Meg, do you remember what Calvin said about compulsion, the day we first met him in the woods?”

Meg noted his quick-fire shift in focus. “You're certainly being very round-about,” she accused him. 

“Meg,” Charles kythed, “I don't want to keep this a secret from you, but I don't want you to get too upset, either. It's bad enough that mother and father are worried; I think father needs to talk to me. And before that, I need to talk to you, and I need you to understand. I don't need you to burn me up with worry. Now, do you or do you not remember the first time we really made friends with Calvin?”

“In the woods by the old haunted house,” she answered, letting her mind wander back to that strange liminal period of unhappy-childhood-emerging-into-adulthood, when she'd first started to get to know gangly Calvin O'Keefe. “You took us both with you to meet Mrs. Whatsit.” She smiled, remembering.

“Do you remember,” Charles Wallace asked again, “what he said to me, then, about compulsion?”

“Um,” Meg thought, digging through her tired mind to get back to the memory; properly speaking, she thought guiltily, the events of that day ought to be engraved on her mind, or maybe her heart, but as it was she had to push past the work and the starfish and the math and the children to get to the memory, and it took her a minute to do so. “That's why he was there. He said it was because of a compulsion he'd had. You got smart with him about the dictionary definition, and he was decent about it even though you were just a kid, and that was when I relaxed around him, because he treated you the same way our family did, not like all the others.”

“'Compulsion,'” Charles Wallace quoted himself quoting the dictionary, “'because one is compelled.'”

“Who's being compelled, Charles?” Meg asked.

Charles' voice in her mind sounded hesitant. “Please don't get upset, Meg.”

“You wake me in the middle of the night wanting to talk about compulsion, and expect me _not_ to get upset?”

She seemed to hear Charles Wallace sighing, the sweet low sigh he used to signal moments of uncomfortable but necessary truth-telling. 

“Poly's being compelled. She's … having an adventure. She's not hurt, not in immediate danger.”

“I haven't heard anything from mother or father,” Meg fretted. “Charles, how do you know?”

“I heard her all the way from here. She's crossed over a time threshold at Mother and Father's. The doorway between eras there has been calling to her for a while, and she's interested.”

Meg's breath stopped in her throat, and she sat up sharply; beside her in the dark, Calvin moved, but did not wake. Good. She wouldn't wake him unless it was necessary; he'd had a long few days, and Charles had said she shouldn't be upset.

She got up; at least one of them should get some sleep, and she knew that if she kept thinking this loudly, Calvin would be disturbed sooner or later. Pulling on a dressing gown, she made her way to the lab, and sat in the soft dark with the sea creatures in their tanks. Their presences calmed and steadied her, rooting her to the flow of time and energy that was the universe; and she could stop trying to control, and cease to be afraid.

Charles was telling her, “I don't know why I hadn't put it together before, about Calvin and his compulsions. Poly's gateway is new, but her adventure is bound up with one we shared, you and I. Meg, you realize that those people, the indigenes around the star-watching rock, are Poly's ancestors, through Calvin, through Beezie? I think that's where the compulsion comes from, in Calvin too – Meg, they have the blue eyes from the prophecy.”

“I remember,” she said. “I noticed, when she was born, and then when they didn't change as she grew up. Charles, she's with them? She's safe? Will she be able to come home?”

“Yes, I think so,” Charles Wallace sent. “There's something she has to do, but – I get the sense that she's going to take her greatest dangers with her from this world, this time.”

“Mother and Father haven't gotten in touch with us,” she fretted. 

“They're worried,” Charles Wallace responded. “They don't want to worry you, or Calvin. And they're both upset by the tesseract, in their own ways.”

“Father was lost to a tesseract for almost three years.”

“I remember,” Charles Wallace kythed back solemnly. “We understood things a lot less, back then. If she's trapped, Meg, I think I could probably punch through to her and bring her back. It would be difficult, and there might be a price, but I would do it, if I had to.”

Meg watched a jellyfish puff itself across its tank.

“Is she there now? In the past?”

“Yes. It's Hallowe'en, you know.”

“Trust me, I do – Rose was up for ages from all that candy and excitement, I thought I'd never be able to get my work done for the night.”

“The doors are all open, tonight, and they're open wide. It was easy for her to pass through. She'll be back again in the morning, Meg, I'm sure of it. The matter might not be ended, though; things seem pretty liminal.”

Meg fretted, “We never should have let that boy know she was staying with Mom and Dad. He asked for an address to write, and I didn't think … Mom said he's been hanging around. I don't think he's good for Poly, he's too attractive and damaged for someone who has so much trust, and so much to give.”

“Maybe the People of the Wind will be a help to her,” Charles Wallace said. “They are, after all, her extended family. Let her get some familial advice.”

“Thank you for letting me know what you felt,” Meg said. “I'm going to be worried about her, of course – but I'd rather know what I can, while I still can. She's so grown-up now, that I'm reduced to a spectator in her life a lot of the time. As it should be. She's a teenager; I'm meant to be up nights worrying about where she is.”

Charles sat with her, kything, for a space, the two siblings sharing tranquil energy back and forth between each other through the smooth, thick cord of light that bound them. When Meg was ready, she opened her eyes and went back to sleep beside her husband.

*

Poly's senses were all ablaze: the sound of the gentle, insistent, pounding drums, the taste and the heat of the wine she'd drunk coursing through her body, the cool stone of the seat beneath her, the chill of the silver crescent warming against the skin of her forehead. She shivered, and Anaral leaned in to wrap a soft blanket of fine wool around her shoulders. Apart from blankets of wool and fur, neither Poly, nor Anaral, nor any of the other assembled People of the Wind, were clothed. They went bare in the firelight, under the darkling sky.

She saw Anaral's high firm breasts, peaked with plum-dark nipples, and took one in her mouth before she'd had time to think twice. Anaral breathed in happy acquiescence, and petted her hand through Poly's tangle of hair as the girl lipped and nipped at her sensitive flesh.

“Good,” Karalys said, and Tav echoed him with an appreciative sound. “It is Samhain; let us now celebrate the pleasure that binds us together, but does not lead to new generation. Some love is meant for the getting of children; and that love is good; but other loves exist to create the strong net-weave of our people, and those also we hold sacred. The gods have blessed us with more loves than are known to many of the creatures of the earth. Give praise together now, children, for the bounty of their gifts.”

The fire flared higher, and the moon was rising.

“I'm not a virgin,” Poly said, rushing, nervous, “so if we need to – ”

“We won't join together fully in that way, not tonight,” Anaral soothed her. “As Karalys says, tonight is not for the getting of children. It is for touching, and being touched, and celebrating each other in that way, before each other and the open sky.”

“I hope you will choose us, sweet Pol-ee,” Tav coaxed. “We only want to hold you and touch you, kiss you and caress you, and all for the glorification of the goddess. Where is the harm in a little touching, pretty Pol-ee?”

If it had only been Tav, or even just Tav and Karalys, Poly might have remained too anxious to proceed, and asked for furs to cover herself with, and withdrawn from the ritual scene. Tav, in particular, she suspected would take every inch she gave him in his pursuit of her, and push for more. But Anaral – with Anaral, she felt only joy and sisterhood, kinship unlooked-for in this strange season out of time.

Had she felt so at-home, so seen, by anyone, since Max had died? Even with her grandparents, who she looked up to and adored, it wasn't this instant, intense, heady connection of heads and hearts. She wanted to breathe in Anaral's breath, and sleep wound about in the dark curtain of her hair.

She brought her face closer to the other girl's, and Anaral didn't move away, and as Poly brushed their lips together she could feel Anaral's long eyelashes fluttering against her own cheek. 

“Yes,” Poly said, “yes, I would like to. I – Love is a good way to do glorification, Karalys, isn't it?”

“I believe so, my dear,” the Druid said. Tav came kissing up Karalys's throat, and the older man submitted to the kisses, leaning back so that his flesh was exposed. The pale expanse flashed in the firelight.

Poly's sex felt slick and wet between her legs, and she grasped at Anaral convulsively, mashing their lips together in awkward, passionate kisses.

“Beautiful Poly, let me stroke you, touch you through your nether hair,” Anaral said. “Such a pretty color, just like the copper of the hair on your head. I will not dip inside, just pleasure you gently. If you like, I will sit so that you can touch me in the same way, while I touch you. Shall I? This is what a kind woman did for me, when I was new to love's touch.”

“Oh yes.” Poly let out a great shuddery sigh, a spinning relief and exhilaration.

Perhaps since her girlhood experiences with the real violence of the world, on Gaea, in Portugal, some part of her had feared that she was growing up to be fed to the murder machine that she'd seen eat up girls and women and spit out broken hearts and bones. 

She'd thought she was pretty, not pretty enough to be a fashion model, after all, but too pretty to be comfortable with. For what felt like the first time, kneeling beside Anaral with the girl's hand sliding along Poly's soaking-wet slit, her own fingers fumbling in the damp heat and hair and slick of Anaral's mound, she felt right in her own body: like it belonged to her, and like she belonged in it. No matter, apparently, what time period she was in. With the right companions, she knew now, she would always be able to belong. It wasn't her first time – but it was her first time like this.

They weren't the only people finding pleasure, singly and together, in the circle of the flaring firelight. As Poly let herself start to scale previously unaccessed peaks of bliss, the knowledge that the People of the Wind were with her gave her a deep sense of comfort and belongingness, so that when she came to the cliff of her orgasm and flew she found that she could float.

It took her longer to find Anaral's release – she was new to this sort of thing, after all – but when she managed it, that was a whole different form of satisfaction to experience, as well.

*

In the farmhouse, Alex was three-quarters of the way through washing the dishes when he gave an audible cry of pain or surprise, and dropped a teacup, which shattered on the kitchen tile. Kate, hurrying into the room at the noise, found him doubled over, cursing quietly in impotent frustration.

“Unexpected spasm,” he admitted, sheltering his reddened hands. “The arthritis acting up again.”

“It's fine, Alex,” she said, leading him to sit at the kitchen table, and bringing him a stress ball to press between those poor aching palms. “Just a little broken china, easily cleaned up. Nothing of value lost.”

“Nothing more than a man who can't even clean up after dinner,” he said bitterly. “A man who can't protect his daughter's child. Just as I couldn't protect Meg, when it really mattered, when we were halfway across the galaxy and her life and soul were in danger. Now Poly, too?”

“A man who has flown farther than most, and worked his hardest through his life, to bend the shape of the world towards justice,” she suggested. “A man who has learned the need to hand the struggle on to his sons and daughter, and their children in turn. We did the work for them, Alex, but it was for them to pick up and carry on. We always knew it wouldn't be finished in just a few short years. We knew it would outlast us.”

“Our bones, if not our hearts,” he ruefully agreed.

“Even the greatest of darknesses will not outlast hearts, my dear. Those endure eternal. Are you really so worried, about Poly and her time slip? Nase seems to think the situation could be mostly benignant, and he's no babe in the woods.”

“I am,” Alex admitted with a sigh, “but I don't know if I'm right to be. I never learned to be emotionally comfortable with tessering, not like Meg and Charles Wallace came to be. Too old, and too inflexible. Set in my ways. I fear the loss of control that rides on the back of the tesseract, for myself and for Poly, too, now. After all, I scarcely rode the whirlwind; quite the opposite, it mowed me down and held me hostage for half a decade. Can you trust that Poly will fare better?”

“I think we must,” Kate said. “I don't know where my certainty comes from, though. I would show you the documentation path, if I could. I suppose it's partly that Poly was born to this, as you were not – you, and Meg and Calvin in turn, had been exploring the boundaries of the universe long before she came into being. She's a child for the new world you built, and she belongs there in a way that of course you never could.”

Alex sighed again, more heavily. Kate pressed her advantage: “Your hands are giving you a message, darling. They're telling you that you have to loosen your grip, and let go. You risk more pain through your clenched fists than open, or even empty, hands.”

“If she doesn't come back,” Alex fretted, “I'm going to have to face Meg, and Calvin, and tell them I've lost their baby girl. I've never managed to forget the look on Meg's face when we had to leave Charles Wallace behind, on Camazotz; imagine how much worse she could manage now, for her own precious daughter. She always was a better fighter than me.”

“Have faith, love them, and mend,” Kate answered, leaning in to kiss him. “I had faith when you were imprisoned in the tesseract, and it did not fail me. I mean to go right on having faith now. If you can't manage it consistently, I'll have to keep the faith for the both of us. I can do it for a while; but after a time, you're going to need to help me with it. I love you. We'll manage.”

“Yes,” he mumbled, and kissed her back, and let the tension in his neck and shoulders start to dissipate. “We will.”


End file.
